Adel is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in southeastern Lake County, in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

. The community is in an arid, sparsely populated part of the state, along

Oregon Route 140 Oregon Route 140 (OR 140) is a State highway#United States, state highway in southern Oregon, United States. It is the longest List of highway route numbers in Oregon, state highway in Oregon, running from the community of White City, Oregon ...

, about east of Lakeview. The Warner Valley surrounding Adel contains many marshes and shallow lakes, most of them intermittent. Frequented by Native Americans for many thousands of years, the valley became a region of sheep grazing and cattle ranching by the late 19th century. Adel's infrastructure includes a combined store/restaurant/bar, a post office, an elementary school, and a church. Hot springs and related geological features have made one of the nearby ranches a potential site for a geothermal power station.

History

People have lived in the Warner Valley for more than 10,000 years. Evidence of Native American occupation includes

petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

s, hunting blinds, flakes from

obsidian Obsidian ( ) is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extrusive rock, extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. It is an igneous rock. Produced from felsic lava, obsidian is rich in the lighter element ...

tools, and other material artifacts. By historic times, the Kidütökadö band of

Northern Paiute Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ...

frequented the valley and the uplands of Hart Mountain, the

fault block Fault blocks are very large blocks of rock, sometimes hundreds of kilometres in extent, created by Tectonics, tectonic and localized stresses in Crust (geology), Earth's crust. Large areas of bedrock are broken up into blocks by Fault (geology) ...

ridge to the east. The Euro-American

settler A settler or a colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that a settler establishes is a Human settlement, settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among ...

community of Adel developed in the late 19th century around sheep grazing and small cattle ranches.

Catholics The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

from

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

found work here as shepherds; their surnames and their churches are part of the regional heritage. A

stagecoach A stagecoach (also: stage coach, stage, road coach, ) is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by ...

line connected early Adel to Fort Bidwell in northern California and offered transportation three times a week. J. J. Monroe owned the Adel store. The Adel

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

was established in 1896 and was either named for a former sweetheart of the owner of the land on which it was established or for a local cow, Leda, but with the spelling reversed. Mail service at that time was limited to three days a week.

Crump Lake Crump Lake is a shallow lake in the Warner Valley of eastern Lake County, Oregon, United States. The lake covers . It is the largest of the Warner Lakes system. The lake is named for pioneer rancher Thomas Crump. Crump Lake is owned by the Ore ...

, immediately north of Adel, is named after Thomas Crump (1854–1939), who settled here in the 1890s.''Oregon Geographic Names'', p. 257 The lake, toward the southern end of a north–south chain of marshes and mainly intermittent lakes, covers about with a shoreline of about . In 1959, two days after the Nevada Thermal Power Company drilled a well on the Crump family property, a continuous

geyser A geyser (, ) is a spring with an intermittent water discharge ejected turbulently and accompanied by steam. The formation of geysers is fairly rare and is caused by particular hydrogeological conditions that exist only in a few places on Ea ...

of steam and hot water began shooting into the air. However, during the 1960s the Crump Geyser became plugged with rocks, though it continued to emit steam. In the 21st century, the site's geoelectric potential makes it a candidate for a

power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electr ...

. The state's first geothermal plant began operation at the

Oregon Institute of Technology The Oregon Institute of Technology (Oregon Tech) is a public college in Oregon with a residential campus in Klamath Falls, Oregon, an urban campus in Wilsonville, Oregon, and additional locations in Salem, Oregon, Salem and Seattle. Almost all s ...

Klamath Falls Klamath Falls ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Klamath County, Oregon, United States. The city was originally called ''Linkville'' when George Nurse founded the town in 1867. It was named after the Link River, on whose falls the city wa ...

in 2010. Another went online near

Vale A vale is a type of valley. Vale may also refer to: Places Georgia * Vale, Georgia, a town in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region Norway * Våle, a historic municipality Portugal * Vale (Santa Maria da Feira), a former civil parish in the municip ...

in 2012 and another, near Paisley, in 2014.

Geography

Adel lies along Oregon Route 140 about east of Lakeview in south-central Oregon. From its intersection with the main highway, Plush–Adel Road runs north along the western shore of Crump and Hart lakes in the Warner Valley while Twentymile Road runs south from Adel to northern California just west of that state's border with Nevada. Deep Creek, flowing east from the

Warner Mountains The Warner Mountains are an -long mountain range running north–south through northeastern California and extending into southern Oregon in the United States. The range lies within the northwestern corner of the Basin and Range Province, ext ...

, passes through Adel into marshlands and Pelican Lake before entering Crump Lake. Adel is above sea level. To the northeast, the Hart Mountain ridge rises to . The region is moderately geologically active with a retired geyser and several hot springs. Geothermal exploration at the Crump Geyser site in 2010 found hot springs with temperatures as high as , two shallow wells with temperatures to , and a parent source of up to .

Climate

This

climatic Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorolog ...

region is typified by large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and cold (sometimes severely cold) winters. According to the

Köppen Climate Classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

system, Adel has a

steppe climate A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi ...

, abbreviated "BSk" on climate maps. Total annual precipitation in Adel averages about . The warmest month is July, with an average maximum temperature of . The coldest months are December and January, when the average lows are about .

Education

Adel School District 21 is one of five school districts comprising the Lake County Education Service District. Adel School, grades 4–8, shares students with

Plush Plush (from French ) is a textile having a cut nap or pile the same as fustian or velvet. Its softness of feel gave rise to the adjective "plush" to describe something soft or luxurious, which was extended to describe luxury accommodation, ...

School District 18, grades K–3. The two schools combined have about a dozen students. For grades 9–12, the students generally attend Lakeview High School or Paisley School. The portion of the county the community is in is not in any community college district, but the county has a "contract-out-of-district" (COD) with Klamath Community College.

References

External links